


TransFormation

by Merayi



Series: TransFormation [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Adorable, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Anorexic Kylo Ren (Implied), Difficult Decisions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, LGBTQ Character, Light Angst, Love, Love Confessions, Rey Needs A Hug, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans Kylo Ren, You See Where This Is Going?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-27 20:58:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19797652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merayi/pseuds/Merayi
Summary: Kyla has made her decision, but maybe it isn't the right one to make.





	TransFormation

Kyla had planned to get to the café early in order to not risk being late, but what getting there early really meant was that she had more time to overthink. It was a wintry Friday morning in the middle of the city, cold and bitter and grey, and the constant number of people down the street was stressing her out. 

What if Rey thought that Kyla had asked to meet in a public place so that Rey wouldn’t flip out on her and cause a scene? What if Rey was embarrassed to be basically broken up with in the middle of a bunch of business people’s lunch break? Was she making a mistake, meeting like this? Was she making a mistake to end things with Rey? What if Rey had really meant what she had said, that she didn’t hate Kyla, that she really was so kind to Kyla because she liked her, that she really wanted to spend time with Kyla and liked her company and could really fall in love with her? It seemed impossible. 

Overthinking. Always overthinking. She had a chronic overthinking issue. 

Sitting at an outside table, Kyla was trying her best to look inconspicuous, slumping in her seat, leaning on her arms, bent over the table. She focused on studying the menu with distant intensity, counting up calories of various options, pretending her body was not trying its best to make her expel stomach acid just at the thought of eating anything. She knew that glancing up every ten seconds and looking around like a guilty puppy was not helping her look casual. She kinda hoped that anyone who noticed her just thought that she had been stood up. 

Given the conversation she needed to have with Rey, she was kinda hoping that she would be stood up. But, Rey was not the kind of person to pull that shit. 

Kyla saw Rey before Rey saw Kyla. 

There she was, standing on the other side of the sidewalk, eyes scanning over crowded street, up on her toes to see over the endless domes of umbrellas. Her eyebrows formed anxious peaks above her eyes, the inner corners scrunched together, marring the expanse of her high forehead with worried furrows. Her lips were parted like they couldn’t decide on what expression to form, slivers of her perfect, white teeth visible behind. She held her arms tucked close around her chest, squishing the straps of the backpack slung over her strong shoulders. Her whole body was so tight with nervousness that it seemed to radiate through the space between the two women. 

Rey was scared. It was clear from a glance. 

Watching her, Kyla felt like a monster all over again. She knew that what she was doing would likely hurt that wonderful, bubbly woman so much. She just had managed to skim over the implications of that. It had been something hypothetical, something distant, a necessary sacrifice to protect them both from worse hurt down the road. Now, though, Kyla faced a physical proof that Rey cared more deeply for her than she had thought. She looked at that troubled, scared face, and imagined the pain spreading across it like a slap as she said what she needed to. The picture made her chest feel like it had been bound in iron, cold and constricting. 

No. Kyla had made her decision. It was for the best. 

It seemed like eons, but it was mere seconds later when Rey’s lovely, hazel eyes finally found Kyla in the crowd. She darted across the street without looking, made stupid in her haste to get to her, skidding to a halt in front of the table where Kyla sat. 

Kyla had been raised in an eminent family by a politician who had taught her all the manners expected of a gentleman. When Rey appeared at the table, Kyla stood to greet her. 

How had she never noticed how she towered over Rey? Suddenly, that beautiful face was staring up at her with all the openness that Kyla loved about it, hopeful and afraid, and for the first time, Kyla really understood. She saw herself in Rey’s eyes, and she didn’t see a monster anymore. She could look in Rey’s eyes, and it wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable or frightening. It was reassuring. It felt like coming home. There was no bustling street, no endless crowd, no traffic, no noise, no anything except Rey’s eyes and the dappled green and brown slivers rimming the bottom of her iris. 

Silence crystallized around the moment like the skin of a bubble. The intensity burned and froze down to the core, somehow both less frightening and more frightening than before. Kyla couldn’t look away from Rey’s eyes. But in her peripheral vision, she was hyper-aware of the parting of Rey’s lips as she looked up, the flare of her nostrils as she breathed, the way her throat moved when she swallowed. 

“What did you want to talk to me about?” Rey asked finally, in this tiny voice in that quirky accent. 

Kyla did not make a conscious decision. It felt like standing on the edge of the precipice, and suddenly, the gap between them had closed and Kyla felt again the warmth and softness of Rey’s lips on hers. They tasted just the same as they had the first time, like sunlight and fresh grass and warm linen, even on this awful, grey day. Maybe it was the last kiss they would ever share, but if it was, Kyla wanted to remember everything. She poured herself into that kiss, hoping that Rey could feel her apology, her guilt, her confusion, her fear, her desire, her passion, her yearning for a place to be safe. 

Kyla felt safe with Rey, safe enough to forget her doubt for a sweet moment and kiss her in the middle of the street. 

Rey’s hands came up to Kyla’s face, small and quick and sure, as she got lost in the passion of the kiss. She didn’t want to pull away. She didn’t know what was happening. Rey didn’t know anything in that moment, but Kyla was kissing her, and she would accept that as everything. 

“Rey…” Kyla’s head was spinning. She had made her decision, but more and more it felt like all the reasons she had to make it were melting away like Spring thaw, and she wasn’t sure anymore that that decision was the right one. What did she do? Rey was looking up at her, eyes wide with this awful combination of fear and hope, with her lips still parted and wet from the kiss, and Kyla didn’t want to break her heart. 

“Kyla.” Rey sounded just as confused she felt. “I… I’m….”

“Don’t say you’re sorry.” It didn’t quite sound like begging, until the quiet, “Please.” How could she make it clear to this wonderful, charming woman that she had nothing to apologise for? Kyla knew that all the problems that had come up in the ridiculously short time they had known each other had been all her own fault. If she could just make herself say what she meant, instead of stumbling over her thoughts, instead of hiding everything she felt, instead of never saying what she wanted or even what she needed…. She could have saved Rey so much confusion and uncertainty and pain. 

With that realisation, the scales inside her tipped. 

“Rey,” she started, and the words didn’t want to come; she had to force them through the tight squeeze of her Adam’s Apple, the pipe both too big and too small for her to be comfortable, “Rey, I… I want to…. I need to… I need to say….” She looked up, saw Rey’s furrowed brows, and looked away again. “I’ve never been in love before, so I think that’s what I feel for you, but I don’t really know. I know I want to be with you, though. I want to spend time with you and hang out with you and go on adventures with you and even just do boring things with you. I know I want to be your girlfriend.” Now that the dam had burst, the words flooded her mouth in a rush. “But, I’m so scared of hurting you that I don’t know where to start. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to fuck you up. If you feel the same, I have to warn you that it’s gonna mean having to deal with a lot of baggage. Like, a fuck-ton of baggage. I’m not easy to be around always. I hurt people without meaning to or knowing I have. I’m broken. I don’t want you to say you’re okay with that if you aren’t.” 

Kyla went still as Rey cupped her face in tiny, warm hands, leaned up on her tiptoes, and pressed the gentlest kiss to her forehead. Sinking back down to flat feet, Rey tucked a lock of Kyla’s hair behind her ear, before her eyes slid away to focus on something on the sidewalk. 

Rey didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how to reply. Nothing that came to mind was quite serious enough for the courage Kyla had shown saying what she had said. She took her time forming the words in her head before speaking them aloud. 

“I feel the same.” That was the most important thing to make clear. “I think I love you, too. And…” Where was the balance between sympathising and hogging the conversation again? “I understand. I know that I can’t know what you have been through. But, I have my own baggage. I’ve just had a lot of time with a therapist learning how to keep it tucked in a purse rather than carrying around a big suitcase. So…” Rey looked up again, swallowing hard, “If you’re willing to try, so I am. I want to be your girlfriend, too.” 

In the back of Kyla’s mind, a small voice screamed that she had never, not once in her twenty-two years, ever felt happiness this intense. She didn’t even recognize it as happiness at first; it felt more like sheer disbelief. But, this swirling, leaping, ballet-dancer-in-her-stomach-somehow feeling was the purest thing she had ever experienced. And, she didn’t even get sidetracked by just how fucked up that made her. Maybe her problems and insecurities and doubts would prove themselves accurate later, but right now she didn’t care. Rey loved her. Rey LOVED her, and she hadn’t thought that sentence would ever - could ever - be true. 

Feeling giddy, Kyla swept Rey up in her arms, almost like a comic-book romance, spinning her around in circles and stamping her feet with her joy. The muscles in her arms weren’t very strong, but she suddenly felt like she was made of magic. Dangling in the air above her, Rey squealed and laughed and peppered her face with kisses until Kyla gently set her down. 

“Hey,” Rey coaxed, seeing the corners of Kyla’s painted lips starting to waver and guessing that she was embarrassed by her outburst, “None of that. It’s a treat to have a girlfriend tall enough to pick me up. I like it.” 

“Girlfriend.” Kyla’s voice betrayed such profound wonder in just that one, simple word. 

“Uh-huh,” Rey nodded once, the movement quick and sure, “Girlfriend. Just to make it official: Kyla, will you be my girlfriend?” 

“Yes.” The reply was emphatic, an excited, rushed whisper pitching Kyla’s low voice high. 

Rey’s smile said everything, that sunshine-bright smile. She was too short to pull Kyla into her arms, but she curled her body into the long, lean lines of Kyla’s and tucked her head under her chin and wrapped her arms around the too-thin middle, and marvelled about how different this moment was to the one where she had offered a stranger a hug sitting on the floor of a bar bathroom a million years ago. 

How things changed. 

Without thinking, Rey took her hand and squeezed tight. Kyla squeezed back, her grip dry, strong, but still trembly. 

“Well,” Rey shrugged, giggling slightly, “since I guess that’s what you were going to tell me over coffee, do you still wanna have a coffee? If you wanted, we could head down to the park afterwards or something? I think I still owe you a sack race rematch….” 

“Perfect!” 

Few things in life were perfect, Kyla thought, but this moment was one. She hoped beyond all hope that somehow, life would give her years more moments like it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, y'all get this chapter a month early... and it's the final chapter! This scene just flowed really well. Like, I was just falling asleep, and the thing basically wrote itself in my head and then demanded I get up and write it down. (It did help that it was Uni holidays.)  
> It feels weird to have this series finished, tbh. I am thinking of doing another related series of just funny/cute/sweet/happy one-shots about Kyla and Rey and the others. Whatcha think?


End file.
